


Maybe You're The Reason

by sentipensante



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Mortal, Crush at First Sight, Dry Humping, First Kiss, Groping, Hair-pulling, M/M, Making Out, Meet-Cute
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-13
Updated: 2021-02-14
Packaged: 2021-03-13 07:29:14
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,227
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29398407
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sentipensante/pseuds/sentipensante
Summary: “You need to chill out. Who in their right mind wouldn’t want to make out with you?”Hovering near the edge of the snack table and clutching a bottle of water to his chest as if it’s a lifeline, Nicky imagines that he can hear Nile’s parting words when she dropped him off at the green room, bouncing in echo around his head.He can practically see her smirking, that knowing look in her eyes that says she knows perfectly well that Nicky isn’t afraid ofnotmaking out with somebody - only of what happens once he does.~Nile is an intern at Buzzfeed who suckers her roommate Nicky into a shoot where he has to - scratch that,getsto - make out with a certain stranger named Joe.
Relationships: Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Comments: 9
Kudos: 112
Collections: The Old Guard Big Bang





	1. Is There A Point To This?

**Author's Note:**

> Many thanks to the lovely [Dylogger](https://dylogger.tumblr.com/) for the title piece.

  


“ _You need to chill out. Who in their right mind wouldn’t want to make out with you?_ ”

Hovering near the edge of the snack table and clutching a bottle of water to his chest as if it’s a lifeline, Nicky imagines that he can hear Nile’s parting words when she dropped him off at the green room, bouncing in echo around his head. 

He can practically see her smirking, that knowing look in her eyes that says she knows perfectly well that Nicky isn’t afraid of _not_ making out with somebody - only of what happens once he does.

~

“I do not even remember the last time I kissed someone, Nile,” he remembers saying to her with a shake of his head.

It had been a week ago exactly, while they stood side by side at the sink washing up the dishes that Nicky had used to make Nile’s favourite: spinach and ricotta _pansotti_ , dressed in a creamy walnut sauce. He remembers how she licked her fork clean with a curl of her tongue and a look like pure bliss on her face, and how it had warmed the bottom of his belly like a burner. 

His roommate had tried to tell him, as she always did, that she would do the washing on her own, since he had cooked the meal. And Nicky had just smiled, as he always did, and picked up a towel as he moved to the spot next to her so that he could dry and put the dishes away as they came up. It was only partly because Nile cannot be trusted to put things away in the same place each time, and also a little bit because Nicky likes to stand next to her and tell himself that he can absorb some of her warmth and exuberance by osmosis. 

And when they were nearly halfway done, Nile had turned to him with her arms up to her elbows in suds and asked him if he would be a part of a video that her work was filming the following week. Which - okay, how could he say no? Nile had done so much for him, had been there for him through - through _everything_ \- 

And, alright, it had seemed an innocent question at first, and Nicky had agreed without even thinking about it because Nile had only been working at this job for a couple of months and he knew how much it meant to her. Even if it was just a PA job where she hardly made any money, it was a big deal, working for one of the largest digital media-entertainment websites in the country. 

And Nile, she had been Nicky’s closest friend since their senior year of college. She had stuck with Nicky through everything ever since, from years of soul-sucking, dead end jobs in offices, or sketchy restaurants, right through a seemingly endless run of lacklustre first dates that never went on to become second or third dates. Never mind the rest of it, with his family and her family and - 

And. There was something, some flash of an expression across her face when he immediately said ‘yes’ that Nicky could not quite manage to decipher on his own. 

“What is the video?” He’d asked after a moment’s hesitation and with a slow, sinking pull of gravity that made the bottom of his stomach feel lead-lined.

And that ominous weight had turned to dread as soon as Nile’s gaze dropped back to the suds, and he saw her cheeks flush a slightly darker shade. 

“Nile, tell me.” 

And oh, she had told him.

~

She had explained the premise of the video and Nicky had felt that same dread unspooling in his belly, becoming something cold and slippery. So when he shook his head, her expression turned plaintive, and she had made a gesture with one hand that sent a cluster of suds sailing through the air towards him.

“Nicky, if you can’t remember the last time that you kissed somebody, that’s even _more_ reason you should do it. It’ll be fun! And - and they’ll feed you, and pay you a hundred bucks to be there for an hour. _Please_?”

Which was patently unfair, as Nile knew that he was incapable of saying no to her when she asked nicely, as it so rarely happened. So he’d agreed a second time, before he even really realized that he was doing it.

~

“You’re Nicky?”

He startles a little, caught off guard by the woman with a headset and a clipboard, then nods. The woman’s purple gum cracks in her mouth as she glances down at her clipboard and flips a page. 

“Alright, Nicky, you’re on deck. If you can just follow me to set, we’ll get your face touched up while you wait, and then when they’re ready for your segment I’ll bring you out to the stage. Got it? Great,” and she doesn’t wait for Nicky to say yes before she’s turned on her heel, so that he has to hurry to keep up with her. 

As he follows the woman down a narrow hallway leading out of the green room, Nicky nervously tightens his hands around the half-empty water bottle so that the plastic makes a crackling noise under his wringing fingers. The woman shoots him a stern look over her shoulder that reminds him, for just a second, of his mother. 

“They’re shooting in two minutes, so the set needs to be silent once we get through that door.”

Nicky nods quickly, and swallows with a mouth so dry that his throat makes a clicking sound. He tosses the water bottle straight into the next recycling bin that they pass and has to fight not to flinch when it makes a clattering sound. 

Up ahead, at the end of the hall, is a door that looks heavy and has a printed sign stating ‘ **CREW/TALENT ONLY PAST THIS POINT** ’ in bold letters. This time the woman is looking at him like she’s actually waiting for a response, so Nicky nods again and clears his throat. 

“Got it.” 

That seems to satisfy her, and she clicks the battery pack at her waist that’s attached to her headset and then murmurs in a low tone into the mouthpiece: “Coming in with on-deck talent to makeup.” 

And none of this, any of it, lends itself to Nicky’s preconception that this was going to be just some little video for the internet rather than a full scale Production, with a capital P. Certainly not as he follows the woman across the room, skirting around the area that is clearly set for the video; there’s a plain, white backdrop draped in a curved incline in front of three cameras that are all set at different angles, and the woman leads Nicky around this area and through another door to a nook that is set apart just for the makeup and hair stylists. 

“Well, you’re just darling,” so says a woman with pink hair and a slash of lime green eyeshadow who’s wearing a utility belt stuffed with makeup brushes around her waist. She points Nicky towards a chair that’s set up in front of her mirror, and then nudges two knuckles under his chin once he sits down, tilting his face up towards her. 

“I think just a little colour correction for the dark circles and some powder for shine, and we’re good to go. Has anyone ever given you shit for being so pretty? If not, please let me be the first.” Her voice feels like flecked velvet against his ears, and she has an accent that he thinks might be from some borough in New York that he doesn’t quite recognize.

Nicky quirks a smile that feels just a little obligatory, even as he hops up into the chair and reaches both hands up to smooth back his hair. He tucks the longer strands that frame his face back behind his ears in a gesture he only does when he’s feeling self-conscious. It’s a smile meant to convey ‘ _thank you_ ’, in that perfunctory sort of way that doesn’t really come from a place that means he actually believes the compliment. 

The woman levels a Look at him, one that seems a bit more knowledgable than Nicky would prefer, but she doesn’t make any comments as she selects a palette from her station and flips it open, then plucks a brush out of her belt.

“Look up,” she instructs and he obeys, eyes aimed towards the ceiling. He’s trying desperately not to flinch while she daubs a yellow-tinged cream pigment under his eyes with a brush that feels soft on his skin. And he’s thinking about whether he might be able to get away with faking an allergic reaction, or maybe a panic attack, _something_ to get out of this without fucking over Nile - or pissing her off to the point where she might set his bedroom on fire. 

But no matter what he does, he knows that Nile will see through any bullshit he tries to pull. 

For a brief moment, Nicky tries to hate her for it.

He’s about to open his mouth and ask the makeup artist about how the shoot has been going, whether the producers have actually been doing a decent job at the matchmaking, but a red light that’s built into the wall suddenly lights up and the makeup artist levels a significant look at the hair stylist. They nod at one another and then she shushes Nicky silently, which he didn’t even know was possible. But one of her manicured index fingers has pressed against her lips, and so he shuts his mouth hard enough that his molars click.

And so instead of talking, he listens to the voices that are being broadcast across the set-wide PA system. 

“Hi.”

“Hey… Um - do we just do this anytime?”

He hears a quiet voice next, presumably from somewhere off-camera:

**“Yes, go ahead whenever you’re ready.”**

Nicky hears nervous laughter, from more than one person. 

“Can we turn out the lights? Come on.”

“This right here is the awkward moment. Um, I’m Justin.”

“Sarah.” More laughter, slightly stilted.

“Are you filming? I mean, are we good to go… whenever?”

**”Yeah. It’s all you guys, take your time.”**

“Uh. Okay. Let’s… can we look at each other, for a second?”

“Okay.”

And then Nicky can’t hear anything for a moment, and he’s holding his breath with his eyes closed as the makeup artist pats under his eyes, then over his forehead, and down his nose with a soft sponge and he smells something clean and sweet, and his nostrils prickle with a terrifying urge to sneeze.

There is just quiet, and then there is something that he can’t quite parse until his brain registers the soft, non-noises that mean the sound of kissing - lips, and saliva, and quietly-ragged exhales echoing against warm skin, and the slide of hands over bare flesh. 

And after a couple of minutes that stretch out like spun taffy into eternity, Nicky hears the huff of soft breathing that turns into more laughter. The sound is strung tight with nerves, like electric wires. 

“Okay, that was a good one,” and then the woman - Sarah? - she’s laughing throatily and Nicky thinks he can hear a giddy sort of smile in her voice, and there’s a layer of a man’s voice chuckling sort of subsonic underneath. 

The crew are quiet now, pure professional. No more direction or answers coming from another voice. 

With his eyes closed, Nicky imagines that he can see the way that the couple might be standing in front of the cameras with their foreheads pressed together, lips warm and flushed with blood and hands lingering at hips or waist or elbows, and he feels that lead balloon in his belly start to lighten into something almost molten. 

“Ready? You’re up, handsome.”

The makeup artist’s voice breaks Nicky out of something that is lightning-struck between a reverie and a trance, and he feels that heat in his stomach drop down through the floor as she taps him on the wrist. 

He can’t help but feel dizzy as he opens his eyes. 

The red light has gone out, and he can hear the crew moving around on set behind him. 

He doesn’t want to stand up, doesn’t want to get out of the makeup chair on legs that feel like jelly. But somewhere out there, in a shadowed corner beyond the cameras and the softboxes and the crew members dressed in black with headsets clipped around their heads - somewhere, Nicky knows that Nile is probably praying that he isn’t about to change his mind and let her down. 

The hairstylist approaches him as soon as he stands up from the chair and looks him over in his critical gaze, reaching up to smooth Nicky’s hair back from his forehead as his other hand comes up with a can of hair spray and follows the trail of his own fingers that muss and scrunch and readjust until he’s apparently satisfied. 

Nicky’s cheeks feel oddly numb. His head must be filled up with air; his heart is beating between his temples, and his blood runs so close to the surface of his cheeks that he’s not sure how the woman with the pink hair hasn’t decided she needs to colour-correct the flush that makes his face feel alight. 

“Nicky! You’re ready? You look fantastic.”

The woman with the headset and the clipboard and the purple gum is back. She’s barely given him a cursory glance before she takes hold of his elbow and starts leading him towards the main area of the set. But then she _does_ look back, surveying him from head to toe, before she nods in apparent approval. 

“I mean that. Wardrobe did a great job, you look chic but casual. Excellent. I think your match is going to be very pleased.”

Nicky’s mouth opens almost before he registers the motion, but his voice catches in his throat. The wardrobe stylist had come over while the last couple was filming their clip and the makeup artist was combing his eyebrows into place with a tinted gel - but she had taken one look at his outfit, and apparently decided that he didn’t need to be re-styled. 

This, more than anything, serves to restore Nicky’s confidence in Nile. Because she had obviously insisted on being the one to dress him for the shoot, disappearing into his closet and emerging with a pair of jeans that he hadn’t worn for the better part of five years - they were tighter than his usual level of comfort, clinging to his thighs in a way that Nile had delightedly described as _obscene_ \- and a white Henley. She’d picked out a belt, and a pair of shoes, and she’d pushed up the sleeves of his shirt until they were tucked neatly to a fold just beneath his elbows. 

And then she had stood back and surveyed him, hands on her hips, lips pursed. Nicky had felt like he was some sort of livestock on display, but apparently she’d been satisfied enough with what she saw that she had no further comments or edits. He is, apparently, allowed to keep the thin, silver chain that holds his pendant of Saint Dwynwen. 

And then his eyes blink open, and he nods with an iron weight dipping his chin towards his sternum.

“Alright. I am ready.”


	2. Living For The Feeling

“Joe.” 

The man’s voice is like gravel and chocolate all at the same time; the sound sinks down through Nicky’s chest and he imagines that it grates his organs into fine ribbons, all while curling something sweet and soft and gentle under his sternum. 

“Nicky,” he replies, his tongue feeling thick and burned, with the other man’s smile making him feel like it’s coating his mouth in a fine layer of sugar granules. Almost like whipped cream on his lips, whipped into something airy, like a cloud. He swallows, then tries to make a deal with himself: 

_If he says something serious, then I will tell him that he’s beautiful_.

There is a moment of silence with just two feet of space between them, smiling at one another, in front of a dozen people and three cameras with their red lights blinking insistently. 

The man is - well, it’s stupid how hot he is, alright? It is unfair, Nicky thinks, on a molecular level. He stands a few inches taller than Nicky, on legs that may rival tree trunks wrapped in denim. His skin is the colour of walnuts and Nicky has a hard time distracting himself from the idea of raking his hands through the mess of curls atop his head. (The only thing saving him, he thinks, is the fact that he feels like he’s diving into the colour of the man’s eyes, and he’s not sure that counts as restraint).

Nicky’s heart beats hard in his throat as Joe’s face shifts, and Nicky almost thinks that the man looks like he’s contemplating - pulling something together, tight and determined, and for a moment there is a rush of sparks flinting within Nicky’s chest as he watches the stranger gather his thoughts into his mouth like a skein of yarn. 

Then: 

“Nice to meet you, Nicky,” and the man’s voice is only pseudo-serious - Nicky knows this because he is looking straight into Joe’s eyes, and they are an enduringly warm shade of brown, and also alight with something that looks suspiciously like mischief. 

His skin looks impossibly silken under the softened lights and Nicky thinks it’s unfair; even his stubble looks soft and makes Nicky’s fingertips twitch with the urge to reach out and stroke his thumbs over the lines of the man’s cheekbones. 

Joe clears his throat, and a dimple appears in a comma-mark next to one corner of his mouth.

“Shall we make out now?”

Nicky huffs a quiet laughs and has a brief flicker of a thought that Joe’s cheeks might have been flushing red if they weren’t such a delicious shade of brown. He has another thought, also fleeting, that this must be how a teenaged girl feels, giggling at a boy who teases her without mercy. 

And then Nicky just shakes his head a little, so that some of his hair slips from behind his ear and settles over one of his eyes. It is, perhaps, an unconscious attempt at concealing the way his stomach is fluttering like insects have crawled their way under his skin. 

Finally, he says, “I guess. Sure.” 

He feels his own mouth stretching out into a lazy, lopsided sort of grin and he takes a half-step closer to the other man. And he also feels something open in his chest like a zipper being torn too fast. He thinks _I want to kiss him until the sky opens in thunderstorms and the building falls down around us and even then I don’t want to come up for air._

Which is absurd, he knows. He doesn’t know this man from Adam. There is no reason that he should feel breathless, despite the fact that they’re both standing still. But Joe’s eyes are shining and his pupils are blown wide as he meets Nicky’s gaze, and Nicky is trying to subdue a grin, and all of a sudden it feels like he has sharp teeth like a lion’s hiding in his mouth.

There are a few moments of contemplative silence that feel like an hour, and then Joe lifts his hands so that his fingertips come to rest against Nicky’s forearms, just below the edges of his sleeves where the stylist has rolled them up. Nicky can feel the hairs on his arms lifting as he breaks out in goosebumps and Joe’s smile hooks wide while he leans in, the corners of his eyes crinkling into a squint. He butts his forehead gently up against Nicky’s, and, oh - his skin feels a little damp with fine beads of sweat.

Nicky doesn’t care.

He thinks, for a moment, that the air smells of petrichor. Ozone-electric, with the tang of Joe’s scent - he wants to say musky, almost? Except that’s not quite right. The scents of cardamom and a recent storm, they prick at the edges of Nicky’s nostrils, and all of a sudden he realizes that his hands have come up to rest against Joe’s waist with his thumbs slotted up against the sharp, diagonal lines of the man’s hipbones.

Joe has a certain light in his eyes. Something dangerous, as Nicky feels a pang of pleasure in his gut, knowing that he can read the tiny changes in a stranger’s posture with such soul-drenched certainty. 

( _Oh, he wishes he could read the other man’s eyes when the light reflects off of his pupils and blinds him._ )

And somehow there have been seconds stretching out between them that have gone gelid, and the rest of the studio has been reduced by the vignette effect of tunnel vision. Nicky can’t make out the corners of the room, or even anything past the light that casts shadows under the stubbled shelf of Joe’s jaw. The lines of his cheekbones. The soft smudge of dark lashes, where Joe’s eyes have fallen shut as he noses along the bow of Nicky’s upper lip.

Nicky exhales, and it’s shaky, like his lungs have forgotten how to work. There’s a vague sort of fluttering that he feels at the back of his head - a butterfly, with uncertain wings, _this is not how soul mates are supposed to meet_ \- his breath burns unbearably hot, buffeted against Joe’s cheek. Joe’s fingers have drifted featherlight, down, down, over Nicky’s wrists, trailing over the backs of his hands until the whorls of his fingerprints are tapping fragments, staccato, against Nicky’s nail beds. 

When Joe angles his face so that their breath mingles, Nicky thinks that he can taste both sugar and salt. There’s a sweetness that catches, clotting in their air between their lips like blood, making his teeth ache. He tries to dare himself to move, to press their mouths together in a tight seam (but he can’t). 

Joe’s head is just barely bent forward, and his eyes are closed. This close, his eyelashes are so dark that they look almost wet. His fingertips have drifted around the edges of Nicky’s palms and started to curl against the undersides of his fingers, blunted nails scraping lightly, and his cheek brushes against Nicky’s with a wiry scrape of stubble and breath that gusts heavy and sweet. 

Nicky feels like there might be a lightning bolt striking him from the inside. 

Joe’s breath is hot on Nicky’s ear, and he murmurs, “I would have kissed you much sooner if we weren’t on camera. For the record.”

“For the record.” 

“Off the record,” Joe mumbles, his voice a low rumble of stone that sits _heavy_ in Nicky’s ear, and there is a weight of _this doesn’t mean anything_ and also _this means everything_ that coils up tight just under the shadow of Nicky’s breastbone. 

Nicky has lost sight and perception of the cameras, of the crew, of the makeup that sits under his eyes. So he follows the heat of Joe’s breath with his lips; it’s the only way that he can tell where he is and what is going on, his head dizzy and hot, a feverish dream spinning around them: the heat of Joe’s skin, and the nip of his teeth against Nicky’s lip as the distance shutters between their mouths and Nicky still does not remember the last time that he kissed _anyone_ , never mind in a way that feels like searching. Like _this_.

Can he find the taste of recent rain on Joe’s lips? Maybe on his tongue, just there. 

Joe’s fingers lacing between his own, the way Joe closes the distance between them so that his hips come up to butt against Nicky’s, between layers of denim and cotton. The way that Nicky curls his tongue against the seam of Joe’s mouth and then pulls his head back to catch the gust of fresh air that still prickles like the scent of rainwater against his nose. 

All of a sudden, Nicky realizes that one of Joe’s hands has come up to curl against the back of Nicky’s head, twisted in his hair, his palm damp and grasping against Nicky’s nape and Nicky returns the favour by pressing one of his palms hard against Joe’s iliac crest. The very tips of his fingers brush over the zippered line of Joe’s fly, not even thinking about an attempt to unzip them, his hand just palming roughly like he can sear through them by sheer force of will as Joe’s lips part under the weight of his own and their tongues meet, hot and hurried and wet. 

Fingers tighten in Nicky’s hair and tug, somewhere between playful and insistent, and Nicky feels shivers of electricity that drip down the backs of his thighs and his calves and curl around his ankles, and Joe’s hand moves across the curve of his hip to press wide against the small of his back. 

Nicky feels that heat like it’s sugar melting against his skin. 

Heat, and stickiness against his palm where Nicky slips his hand under the hem of Joe’s shirt and pushes the fabric up that flat, muscled wall of his stomach - and while he angles his head in a way that deepens that knocking, clumsy seeking of their mouths. 

He’s not even trying to undress the man; he just wants to _touch_ him, to feel all of him, to savour the warmth of his skin and the trickle of sweat that drips down and along Joe’s hipbones to disappear under the waistband of his underwear. Nicky thinks about sipping at the moisture there, salty-sweet, getting dizzy and drunk on it like dandelion wine while he bites down gently on Joe’s bottom lip and sucks the meat of it into his mouth.

Nicky feels greedy, and he arches into the strain of that blissful sensation. Joe’s chest is pressed flush against his own, hot skin to hot skin with layers of cotton between them. 

There’s a tightness drawn through their legs, and hips, and the points where Joe’s fingers bruise against the back of Nicky’s neck and alongside the base of his spine. 

“ _Fuck_ ,” he mumbles into Joe’s parted lips, mostly breathless, his palms sliding down and around the small of Joe’s back so that he can keep them pressed close together. He doesn’t even think that he can tell their heartbeats apart, and he’s lost track of the cameras spinning out around the spot where they have ignited, frenetic, against one another. 

The sound of thunder rolls in Joe’s throat when he gasps. There are tidal waves rushing in and tugging at their ankles, where Nicky can feel their hearts beating. They might be caught in a vicious flooding from the storm - that thundercloud beating rain down around their ankles until their feet throb, feeling the sky cracking open somewhere above the ceiling. 

Nicky doesn’t know how long they have been kissing when Joe’s mouth parts from his own and makes his lips feel cold, and blue. He wants to shiver, but Joe’s palms are searing hot against his ribs, through the soft weave of his shirt. 

Nicky’s hand rests, still and careful, against the outside of Joe’s hip. Cradling the muscle that lays there, beneath the surface. He imagines that he’s cupping the man’s bones in his palm. 

“Wow.” 

It’s all that Nicky can manage, and he might feel embarrassed if he weren’t straining hard against the zipper of his jeans. 

Joe nods, blinking wetly as he exhales, and reaches up to rake his curls back with his fingers.

“Wow,” he echoes, the faintest hint of a smile on his face (it feels much larger, though - the open joy of it). “You are - that was good.”

The dimple tucks back into Joe’s cheek just beside his mouth, and his gaze darts over to the cameras as he chuckles, soft and warm breath against Nicky’s chin. Nicky thinks, _if only we could stay like this forever_. He tries to focus on Joe’s features. He thinks, _this was only for the cameras_. 

He thinks _this did not mean anything, even though it meant everything_.


	3. Keep Looking For Something

For whatever reason, Nicky doesn’t ask Nile if there’s a way that he can try to find Joe after the shoot.

He’s sort of afraid. 

The man - _Joe_ \- he seemed pretty amazing, actually. He wore his curls a little long, a little unruly, but not exactly like the pretty-boy indie-singer long that Nicky could be accused of wearing if he was going to look for critiques of his hair. (Personally, he thinks he’s just a bit shaggy).

After the shoot, everything is supposed to go back to normal. 

It’s funny, Nicky thinks, how ‘normal’ always ends up being Nicky doing their laundry, if it gets done at all - Nile cracking jokes over her shoulder about how, with Nicky’s long hair that brushes his chin, and his soft hands, he must be the best candidate. 

“You’re just so domestic,” she says, the corners of her eyes crinkling up, laughing and swinging her arm around Nicky’s shoulders with her hand in a fist, banging against Nicky’s pectoral. “Once you’re done with my unmentionables, would you make me a sandwich?”

Nicky doesn’t mind. Honestly, he’s logistically probably pretty immune to Nile’s eyes all big and guilty like a puppy dog’s. Even when she makes big promises about taking care of his suits, or whatever else he needs dry cleaned - he’s fully aware that she will get distracted, and so he takes care of it anyway. 

Secretly, though? Nicky likes it. Not that Nile makes him do it, but - if it has to be done - he low-key enjoys it, okay? Laundromats are a comfort, something that throws back to his childhood growing up with four siblings and one very harried mother in a borough that didn’t boast a lot of washing machines on-property. And then there’s the college flashback, too. 

He used to sit in laundromats for hours and hours, watching the old women sweating over their baskets and doing five minute sketches in his head, memorizing the creases in their faces. He’d watch the kids who put rocks in with their jeans and fucked up the machines; he’d think about the tension in their arms and the shadows of stubble across their faces. 

It felt nice then, like it does now, to sit and people-watch, and to keep his hood up so that his face falls into shadow.   
Even the rumble of the machines feels familiar.

 _Joe_.

All that Nicky can think about is that single syllable. 

So he tries to focus on the laundry that tumbles out of the machines and into the waiting arms of the people leaning into the machines. In a businesswoman’s load, the flutter-flash of a neon yellow bra; in an old man’s, the heaps of threadbare shirts that he handles like they’re soft, newborn babies. Sometimes, Nicky wonders what people must be thinking about his laundry as he makes the transfer between the top-loaded machine and the dryer - there’s a selection of Nile’s sports bras in every colour, enough for a whole marching band. Then Nicky’s torn jeans and Nile’s crop tops and cheap boxers from whatever flavour of the week she’s been entertaining. 

Nicky wonders if people smile at the loads that he hauls around the laundromat, maybe. He thinks that would be nice.

He even likes the drive home in his old Hyundai, the way that the laundry fills up his car with the clean scent even with his windows down. If it’s a nice day, his shirts end up smelling like freshly cut grass and it makes Nicky feel like he’s in heaven. He always cranks the stereo up when he’s driving home from doing laundry, blasting Lana Del Rey and grinning out the windows. He thinks about how he sometimes picks up Nile from work and she always screeches “SHOTGUN” even though no one else is coming along, and it makes him laugh until it hurts.

Once he gets back to their apartment and hauls the basket up to their unit, he sets everything down and grabs a drink of water that soothes his throat. The laundry makes Nicky’s hands warm while he folds it on their couch. He kneels there, like it’s an altar, hands moving steady and slow. The heaps next to him decrease and eventually Nile walks by, and she cracks a few jokes about Nicky being her housewife, and Nicky grins while also flipping her off between a couple of pairs of jeans. (He’d sorted the laundry by owner, for a bit, until he started to realize that living with Nile sort of made the concept of owning clothes disappear).

Sometimes, if Nile is around, she will wander in and sit on the arm of the couch. 

“Nicky?” She’ll ask, usually in the same sort of mildly-curious tone.

“Mm?”

“When we’re old. Will you promise to live with me, so you can do my chores?” Nile’s grinning while she asks it, laughing like bells pealing, and stretching her legs out to set her ankles on Nicky’s shoulders, crossed neatly. “Do you promise that you’ll make my bed, and clean my dishes, and dust the bookcases?”

Nicky swats at her legs and he laughs. “I’m not your bitch, _bitch_.”

But secretly, this is what makes the pit of his stomach heat up like the bottom of an iron. The thought of Nile with lines around her mouth, the statues that Nicky will carve out of clay - the chisel, and the way he will attempt to smooth out those lines. To return her to youth. He thinks about how they will live together in a tiny cottage and Nicky will be constantly dusted with flecks of dried clay, and Nile will burn her fingers when she tries to make dinner, and their curtains will be the colour of purple jelly beans.

Nicky thinks about what it might be like, to live in close quarters with the man who gave him the best kiss he’s ever had in his life.

For that dream to become true, Nicky knows that he will do any work. He will kneel on the floor like his mother and scrub so hard the tiles until his knuckles bleed, with the pads of his fingers shrivelled by bleach. He will make his hands cracked and sore with soaps and chemicals, and he will break his back, bending to vacuum the corners and the crannies.

It’s not exactly the sort of dream that he can tell Nile about, is it? But something about the light in her eyes when he makes those jokes… Nicky thinks, _maybe he doesn’t want a cottage, maybe he wants a shoebox in Brooklyn, a block from the subway. Maybe a box of rosemary and tulips in the windowsill, spilling out onto the fire escape. Maybe he thinks about petunia petals in his hair when he comes home at night._

And Nicky will smile, and he will get up, and he will go off to do something else, and Nile will make fun of him while he sits and folds her T-shirts like they’re origami cranes. Nicky is positive the he has folded a thousand by now, even though he isn’t sure when his life is going to get saved. 

Soon, he fucking hopes.

Nicky folds laundry in a trance, and he thinks about asking after Joe, and he thinks about the creases that he presses his finger to: the back of a knee, the seam running up the meaty side of a calf. He thinks about Nile’s muscles, how they’ve grown and stretched over the years, kicked and tensed.

Those muscles that will shrivel and grow fragile like spun sugar melting in the rain. Nile growing old, Nile quiet in bed at night, the blankets stretched thin over her hips like her skin is tight over her bones. Nicky painting her still frame. The canvas taught, like Nicky’s eyes feel.

Nicky can smell the flowers in the detergent, and he thinks that it smells like funerals.

He tries to push his mind away from the answers that he doesn’t have anymore. Maybe Joe, the man who kissed him so hard that it hurt, wants a tiny house in the suburbs. One story, bedroom in the back of the house so that he can hear the cars going by when he sleeps at night. Cars and rain and rhythmic sounds, the city waking itself up, and then going back to sleep. Lulling itself into peace. 

Nicky thinks about a swingset in the backyard. Swinging himself into sleep with a stranger straddling his lap, eyes closed, legs crossed at the ankle, smelling of cut grass and lilac fabric softener. He pictures the back of a neck stretched, arched, pale white like soap suds, and his heart bubbles up into something that he thinks might be love.

Under the moon, and the stars, and the falling leaves, the orange and red and yellow of autumn in their suburban maybe-paradise - Nicky remembers the taste of cinnamon against his mouth, and wonders if it’s the taste of love.


End file.
